Pocket Profiles

Handango announced the winners of its “Mobile Fanatic” contest on May 3 of this year. Participants submitted stories about how their use of mobile devices and software applications made them a “mobile fanatic.” From a wide variety of stories submitted by the April 2 deadline, 15 judges selected 10 finalists and a grand prize winner. Below are the grand prize winner’s story and my synopsis of a few of the others. You can read them all on Handango’s “Fanatic Winners” Web page (http://www.handango.com/FanaticWinners.jsp). Note that all of the software titles mention in this article are available on Handango’s Web site (http://www.handango.com).

Mobile Fanatic Grand Prize winner: Todd Hayes, Texas

After I bought my iPAQ, life at the gym became fun!

After a lifetime of struggling with weight problems, I decided to finally join a gym and get on an exercise and nutrition program. The problem: I hate dieting and exercising, especially cardio workouts (mind-numbingly dull). Little did I realize that a PDA would be my key to sticking to a healthy routine. In fact, after I bought my iPAQ Pocket PC, life at the gym became (almost) fun!

I started by downloading eBooks to read while doing my cardio workouts. Then, I realized my Pocket PC was also an MP3 player, so I downloaded music to listen to while reading eBooks while doing cardio! Wow! I finally had something to distract me from my body screaming at me for torturing it! I quickly became the envy of the gym staff. But, eBooks and music were just the beginning!

Being a movie buff, I figured watching flicks would be the ultimate way to pass the time and distract me from the agony of exercise. Again, my Pocket PC was the answer. I found software to compress and download full-length movies onto an SD card, and then watch them (with CD quality sound, no less) on my Pocket PC! If you think the gym staff was amazed by eBooks and MP3s, you should’ve seen their faces when I demonstrated a movie on my iPAQ! I was on a roll now to find even more uses for my iPAQ while at the gym, so I couldn’t stop there.

I signed up for a nutrition program that requires me to track everything I eat. After a lifetime of dieting, I knew I couldn’t stick to such a tedious, time-consuming practice for the long run. Again, my Pocket PC came to the rescue with Pocket Diet Tracker software. All I do is select from the software’s list of foods and exercises and it automatically keeps track of all the calories consumed and burned! I downloaded fast-food restaurant info into the software, so I can even cheat once in a while and still keep track!

Today, I’m celebrating the loss of my 50th pound. I’m sure I wouldn’t have made it without my PDA. For me, it’s become the ultimate fitness, weight-loss and entertainment tool in one. Well, maybe not quite “ultimate” yet: I still need to find a way to have it do the exercise for me.

Mobile Fanatic finalists

The following are brief summaries of Pocket PC-oriented articles which were selected as finalists in the contest:

How my Pocket PC saved Valentine’s Day. (By Hillery Schanck)

Hillary’s desire to create an extra special Valentine’s Day for his wife involved a lot of extra planning. He used JournalPro to keep track of his romantic ideas. He used Pocket Word and an external keyboard to write down the rules to a week-long scavenger hunt culminating on Valentines Day. And he found a special Valentines Day wine, a Chilean merlot with a 2001 vintage, with the help of Pocket Explorer.

Powerful small apps...brought new quality to my business life. (By “A.I.”)